Americanisms And Briticisms With Other Essays

Author : Brander Matthews
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9780483262362
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Download or read book Americanisms and Briticisms written by Brander Matthews and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2018-01-17 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Americanisms and Briticisms: With Other Essays on Other Isms In the preface to the first edition of his dictionary, issued in 1825, Noah Webster declared that although in America the body of the language is the same as in England, and it is desirable to perpetuate that sameness, yet some differences must exist, Since language is the expression of ideas, and if the people of one' country cannot preserve an identity of ideas with the people of another country, they are not likely to retain an absolute iden tity of language; and Webster had no difficulty in showing that differences of physical and political conditions had al ready in his day, only half a century after the Revolution, and when the centre of population was still close to the Atlanticseaboard, produced differences of speech. It is too much to expect, perhaps, that the British critic shall look at this Yankee independence from our point of view. Professor Lounsbury tells us in his admi rable biography that in Fenimore Cooper's time the attitude of the Englishman tow ards the American in the most favorable cases was supercilious and patroniz ing, an attitude which never permits the nation criticising to understand the na tion criticised. Things have changed for the better since Cooper was almost alone in his stalwart Americanism, but the arrogance which General Braddock of his Majesty's army Showed towards Colonel Washington of the Virginia con tingent survives here and there in Great Britain, even though another dean Sits in Dr. Alford's stall in Canterbury Cathe dral; it prompted a British novelist not long ago to be offensively impertinent to an American lady (athenceuin, September I, and it allowed Lord Wolseley to insult the memory of Robert E. Lee with ignorant praise. It finds expression in a passage like the following from a Primer of English C omposition, by Mr. John Nich ols: Americanisms, as Britisher, ' Skedaddle, ' and the peculiar use of clever, ' 'calculate, guess, 'reckon, ' etc with the mongrel Speech adopted by some humor ists, are only admissible in satirical pict ures of American manners (p. When we read an assertion of this sort, we are reduced to believe that it must be the dampness of the British climate which has thus rusted the hinges of British man ners. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.